Impressment

For those who dislike camping, or who just fail to see its attractions, believe me, I can understand, and do sympathize. Yes, having in my time experienced many of the vicissitudes common to the pursuit, really I can comprehend why the prospect of shooing flies off the melting lunch-butter, or of lying on a cot in a damp nylon bag while it drizzles for hours on the tent roof, or of having to stumble four hundred paces to the bathroom in the dead of the night (coyotes howling) on account of a case of diarrhea--all adds up to an experience that fails to entice. Somehow though--I suppose through some anomalous short circuit in the brain--I am able to take the bad of camping and lump it in with the good, like a bitter turnip tossed in with a wholesome stew, but redeemed in the mish-mash and warm rosy sundown of composite digestion. Even a half-mile walk I take every evening down to the trash bins, to dispose of a tea bag or two or three or four (and whatever else leftover and comestible must be kept from the clutches of the masked artful dodger called the coon) I find I can turn into an opportunity to admire the rising moon or the acrobatic flitting of the swifts, or the gymnastics of the last few children on the playground as they hang from the bars and swing on the swings like the primates that they in some playful inner space very well know they are. Yes yes always always I thoroughly enjoy the time.

We go together, my wife and son and I, always to the same Wisconsin state park. We stay for two weeks, and every morning of every day we go hiking, and every afternoon of every day devote to napping in our vintage canvas tent and to reading books and to daydreaming and study. We turn in every night around nine. This is when the sun goes down in June and the whippoorwills start their calling.

Then comes the hard part. Going back.

Right from the beginning, the drive back invariably depresses me. Picture now you're leaving the park in all its beautiful bright particulars behind you: its bluebirds and scarlet tanagers, its sandstone bluffs and jack pines, its waterfalls and fields purple with lupine and other fields dotted with daisies, and you pull out onto the highway and roll up the car windows and immediately yes immediately no longer are you the conscious alert observer or wakeful celebrant of the natural scene, but just another mobile encapsulated consumer participating in the hot flow of human economic blood, and the interstate here serves pretty much literally as an artery and you're an automotive blood cell moving along within the artery and here's a billboard for vodka and here's the exit for the water park and here's the body of a deer.

A metaphor to consider:

Back in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the British navy, finding itself chronically understaffed, to Americans' consternation practiced what was called "the press" or impressment.  This was a form of forced conscription, and proved on the American side to be one of the primary incitements to war with England in 1812. Simply put, British captains out on the high seas had a habit of helping themselves to a few seamen here and there; these might be sailors on merchant fleets, or sometimes even the fleets of rival navies. The general routine went like this: take one powerful warship (yours) and swing it alongside a helpless smaller ship, have your own men draw a few sabers, speak the necessary number and voila! The number of men demanded was now yours.  All this was easy enough to accomplish, given the isolated situation of a warship on the open sea; usually there were just no other ships around to call you out or challenge you.

Now here's my question today, which is actually a two fold question that breaks into all sorts of other questions too, a sort of interrogative billiard shot that splits I think into all sorts of spins and ricochets of implication.

1. In the first place, isn't impressment a pretty decent metaphor for the way we treat the planet and all its life forms? that is, always as a ship to serve us, always as a resource for the taking, always as something to toy with to suit our desires. Just this morning I note that researchers have apparently cooked up a way involving neural implants and video game joysticks, to remotely control cockroaches. At first it sounds  like a joke, but no it's real, and, regardless of how you feel about roaches, clearly a case of impressment.

2. In the second place, given an economic system sustained by the impressment of nature, is it any wonder that the same system presses so many human beings into service to it as well, in ways both rank and subtle? The obvious recent case concerns the sweatshop workers in Bangladesh--the hundreds dead, the thousands affected by that building collapse. But consider too, another phenomenon: all the young people in the US currently seeking (generally at great cost) college degrees, though with little hope of finding work that will enable them to pay off their student debt, when, after graduation, that debt comes due. Again, a case of impressment. A case of "do this, whether it's good for you or not. Feed the machine." Moreover there's plenty of evidence both anecdotal and statistical to suggest that in the face of their uncertain, debt-laden future, students' primary concern surprise surprise in pursuing their degrees has little to do with growing into more thoughtful, informed citizens, or with enjoying and appreciating the fruits of civilization, or even with simply enjoying their youth; it has to do with arming themselves for a competitive workforce. You see, the culture itself has been hijacked for staff, and all of us hoodwinked into believing there is no way for us to prosper unless we live in conflict and competition with one another. Well, it's time to question all this. Time to quit swabbing the deck until we know the destination. And mutiny too if needed.

Find your way back to the home you love. Take passionate refuge in an independent mind.

HB